Category Archives: Ashuwilticook Rail Trail

I believe that spring will finally come to my corner of the world because two weeks ago I was down in Princeton (about three hours south of here) and saw green lawns, apple blossoms, and tulips. To use the language of Christian eschatology, I wait in hope for the future to break into the present.

Here in the Berkshires we must wait until early May for real spring to arrive. Later in the summer when the city dwellers descend on us for our cool nights and lovely days we are thankful for our geography, but this time of year we experience first hand T. S. Eliot’s observation that “April is the cruelest month.” (The Wasteland, 1922)

But here and there I spy glimpses of things to come. I have some crocuses (croci?) popping up around the edges of my house, and my lawn shows hints of green and begs to be raked. The days grow longer and each one, if closely observed, yields signs and portents. I recently read the children’s classic The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, and though it was the dead of winter, shared in her rich descriptions of the garden’s daily changes.

So on a warmer sunny day this week I climbed on my bike for the first time in 2009 and hit the Ashuwilticook Rail Trail. I had to take the snowshoes out of my trunk to make room for my bike bag and floor pump, surely another sign of the changing season. It was a bit chilly alongside Cheshire Lake, but after all, the ice has been out of the lake for only a few weeks. There was no ice on the trail, but still a few stubborn chunks clinging to the shady cliffs alongside the Hoosic River at Cheshire Harbor, and some remaining big sandy piles of snow in the parking lot of the Berkshire Mall near the head of the trail.

The Canadian geese were in abundance, some lazy ones now never migrate and have become pests and foul the trail. We had one white swan for a few days several weeks ago but he or she is gone now.

Over the years of riding the trail I have seen a black bear, deer, snapping turtles as big as a lawn mower, and numerous other animals and birds. This week, though, I didn’t see much besides the geese and ducks.

The buds are getting red, and here and there some begin to show the gold that precedes the green, reminding me of Robert Frost’s little poem, Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

It’s been a long, cold winter here with lots of snow. But spring is slowly coming to the Berkshire and soon we can share in Solomon’s song:

“For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth:
The time of the singing of birds is come,
And the voice of the turtle-dove is heard in our land.”
(Song of Solomon< 2)

Natasha’s Richardson’s shocking death from a head injury last week after what seemed like a minor fall on the bunny slope of a Canadian ski resort highlights how fragile our brains can be.

I have a traumatic brain injury (TBI) that I acquired in a catastrophic cycling accident in 2000, which is why I am the retired pastor who ruminates and not the still active pastor too busy to blog. I wrote a memoir of my crash called “I Lost My Marbles on the Mohawk Trail.”

Unlike Richardson I was wearing a helmet when I fell, which may have saved my life. Dr. Robert Cantu, a director of the Neurological Sports injury Center at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, is quoted in yesterday’s New York Times, “Had she (Richardson) been wearing a helmet she would have been alive.” Cantu said, “Helmets, although they do not prevent concussion, have a virtually 100 percent record of preventing skull fractures.”

So wearing a helmet is a good investment in your health. I ride on our local bike path, the Ashuwilticook Rail Trail , quite frequently, and am amazed at how many people ride bicycles without wearing a helmet. Here in Massachusetts there is a law that children must wear them, but I see mom and dad helmet-less while the kids wear them, which sends the message that helmets are for kids. It’s like the parents who drop the kids off for Sunday School but don’t go to church. Children get the message. And people have told me they don’t wear one because they are only on the trail and don’t go very fast, but it only takes a minor bump to do the damage, as Richardson’s injury shows.

And though a helmet can’t guarantee that you won’t sustain a TBI, it will likely lessen the impact and resulting damage and disability. We are seeing thousands of cases of TBI from troops returning from Iraq, and the human and social cost of these injuries is profound. TBIs can cause memory loss, focus and attention issues, personality changes, chronic tiredness, severe depression, inability to multitask, sleep problems, and many social problems. A psychiatrist who fell from a ladder and hit his head had to quit his practice. He told me that having a brain injury is “an exercise in patience and humility.” I have found that to be true.

So do what you can to avoid getting a TBI. If you ride or ski or participate in any sport where your head is at risk, do yourself and those you love a favor. Wear a helmet.